Historical fiction that does not suck

[BWV 1080]

Feeling burned out on fantasy / sf and looking for ideas on historical fiction that does not suck

Suck = not historically accurate, characters who act like 21st century Americans, mindless action yarns, some modern political agenda from the author etc

So a few of my favorites
WT Vollmann - all of the Seven Dreams books
Marguerite Yourcenar - The Abyss, Memories of Hadrian
John dos Passos - USA Trilogy (maybe doesnt count, as written in 1930s about the 1920#
Robert Graves - I Claudius, Count Belisarius
Patrick Rambaud - The Battle
Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian

[Karl Henning]

It's old-school, so perhaps not so much historical fiction as "novelized history," but I really enjoyed Harold Lamb's The Crusades, in two parts: Iron Men and Saints, and The Flame of Islam.

[DavidW]

I reread War and Peace a couple of years ago.  Tolstoy wrote it several decades after the events in question making it historical fiction.

The same can be said for Les Miserables.

For more modern-- Lonesome Dove.  I also like The Terror, and Abominable (the former has fantasy elements but the latter does not) both by Dan Simmons.

I plan on reading Picnic at Hanging Rock soonish.

I guess I should just say Lonesome Dove five times over.

[Mandryka]

Feeling burned out on fantasy / sf and looking for ideas on historical fiction that does not suck

Suck = not historically accurate, characters who act like 21st century Americans, mindless action yarns, some modern political agenda from the author etc

So a few of my favorites
WT Vollmann - all of the Seven Dreams books
Marguerite Yourcenar - The Abyss, Memories of Hadrian
John dos Passos - USA Trilogy (maybe doesnt count, as written in 1930s about the 1920#
Robert Graves - I Claudius, Count Belisarius
Patrick Rambaud - The Battle
Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian

Pierre Michon's The Eleven, Kateb Yacine's Nedjma, Michel Tournier's Erl-King. If you can read French, Pierre Bergounioux's B-17 G.

Also entertaining in a middlebrow way : Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell series. Sebastien Jarispot's A Very Long Engagement,.

I thought John Littell's The Kindly Ones was uneven, but had some memorable things in it.

[Florestan]

Umberto Eco
Amin Maalouf
Sándor Márai
Maurice Druon

[Jo498]

I reread War and Peace a couple of years ago.  Tolstoy wrote it several decades after the events in question making it historical fiction.

The same can be said for Les Miserables.

Both great books although for me also not exactly historical fiction because rather close to the events, in fact Hugo was a contemporary of the 1830 events. His Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of) is historical and also good. Of course 19th century historical fiction also bears the marks of the time of writing but it can be interesting and entertaining. E.g. Flaubert's "Salambo" (about ancient Carthage) is also a wild ride or rather a huge, extremely colorful canvas, despite probably being as much fantasy as history.

One of my favorites, but he is not a typical "exact" historical writer and rather writes an early kind of "magical realism" (for want of a better expression) is Leo Perutz. He wrote a bunch of shortish (200-300 pages) novels mostly set in historical epochs although his most famous one is set on the eve of WW 1 (The Master of the Day of Judgment), the best one IMO is "The swedish cavalier" (set in the early 1700s Nordic war). I am not sure about translations and availability in English, though. (Due to emigration and war, Perutz who had landed a few huge successes in the 1920s, is not as well known in Germany/Austria as he should be but his books are mostly readily available.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Perutz

[Florestan]

One of my favorites, but he is not a typical "exact" historical writer and rather writes an early kind of "magical realism" (for want of a better expression) is Leo Perutz. He wrote a bunch of shortish (200-300 pages) novels mostly set in historical epochs although his most famous one is set on the eve of WW 1 (The Master of the Day of Judgment), the best one IMO is "The swedish cavalier" (set in the early 1700s Nordic war). I am not sure about translations and availability in English, though. (Due to emigration and war, Perutz who had landed a few huge successes in the 1920s, is not as well known in Germany/Austria as he should be but his books are mostly readily available.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Perutz

+ 1.

[BasilValentine]

Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate (a sort of War and Peace of the Stalin age) is a masterpiece centered on the siege of Stalingrad.

Mikhail Bulgakov's The White Guard (reds versus whites in Kiev) is very good.

Solzhenitsyn's Red Wheel 1: August 1914

Tolstoy's War and Peace (a little obvious, I know)

Isaac Babel Red Cavalry Stories

Victor Hugo Ninety Three

[Florestan]

Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate (a sort of War and Peace of the Stalin age) is a masterpiece centered on the siege of Stalingrad.

Mikhail Bulgakov's The White Guard (reds versus whites in Kiev) is very good.

A big + 1 to both although Jo's remark about Hugo applies to them as well: both authors were contenporary with the events so I'm not sure if they qualify as truly historical.

[BasilValentine]

A big + 1 to both although Jo's remark about Hugo applies to them as well: both authors were contenporary with the events so I'm not sure if they qualify as truly historical.

I see your point. But doesn't it become historical fiction at some point after the author is long dead?

But with your definition in mind: Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame is magnificent.

[BWV 1080]

Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate (a sort of War and Peace of the Stalin age) is a masterpiece centered on the siege of Stalingrad.


Solzhenitsyn's Red Wheel 1: August 1914

Forgot about those two, great books

[Florestan]

I see your point. But doesn't it become historical fiction at some point after the author is long dead?

But with your definition in mind: Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame is magnificent.

I take no credit for the point, it's all Jo's, see reply #5 above.

Hugo's Ninety-Three is a very fine novel indeed.

[Jo498]

I think historical fiction is usually understood that at the time of writing the novel is about events in the past, usually but not necessarily a somewhat distant past. Notre Dame de Paris is a clear case, I'd also say that War and Peace should count as it was written almost two generations after the events, and the lifetime of the author didn't overlap with them. But Les Miserables has the bulk (I think) taking place in the 1820s when Hugo was already a young man.
I am not sure if we are always consistent. Mann's "Buddenbrooks" is technically historical except for the very last part (that would overlap with Mann's youth in the 1880s as the family history is of course inspired by his own family) but I have never seen it called a historical novel and I'd also say that e.g. Les Miserables does feel more historical. Maybe because many historical novels include somewhat important political events and this is mostly irrelevant in Mann's family saga.

A few more books:
Gore Vidal: Julian
and John Williams: Augustus. (About the respective Roman Emperors.) Both a bit slow but rather high level.

"Butcher's Crossing" by Williams is also a fun quick read (more fun and quick than Augustus), it's almost Moby Dick with Buffalos instead of Whales (but much shorter than Moby Dick). I always meant to read Harris' Trilogy? on Cicero? (or probably generally the end of the Roman Republic) but never got around. I read his "Pompeii" which is not great literature but a nice read (admittedly I found the information on Roman aquaeduct technology more interesting than the somewhat predictable action dominated by Mt Vesuvius). As a kid I also must have read a probably abridged version of Bulwer-Lytton's "Last days of Pompeii"... and Sienkiewicz' "Quo vadis?" (But like "Ben Hur" everybody knows at least the movies and they are rather quaint, although I liked them as a teenager).

A very good book I read last summer (or the year before, not sure) is Lion Feuchtwanger: Jew Suss (Jud Süss). This was turned into a horrible Nazi movie but it was written by a Jewish author and while antisemitism does have a role it is not the main point, rather the rise and fall of a brilliant but ruthless/conflicted character in a colorful setting and a crazy time period (early/mid 18th century, based on the real financier Joseph Süss Oppenheimer). (Feuchtwanger wrote a few more historical novels, one on Goya and one about Jews in medieval Spain but I have not read them).

[Florestan]

Jose Saramago - Baltasar and Blimunda

This is excellent and features Domenico Scarlatti as one of the secondary characters. Highly recommended.

[JBS]

Gore Vidal's Creation is one of the best I've read, although it doesn't quite fit the facts. (Zarathustra's grandson does a bunch of travelling, meeting Buddha and Confucius among others.)

Colleen McCullough's series on Rome is uneven, but when it's good it's very good. The opening volume (First Man in Rome) and the books devoted to Julius Caesar are the best ones, I think.

Reaching back to mid 20th century writers, I would nominate Thomas Costain's The Tontine.

My parents had a 2 volume hardback copy. I read it 2 or 3 times through as a kid. The Amazon image comes from a 920 page paperback edition.

[André Le Nôtre]

You guys should check out my latest bestseller, Haven't pissed since Coalinga: Thirty years of travel up and down California's Central Valley! It is an uproarious series of short vignettes mixing fiction and nonfiction, spanning the 1980s through 2010s!!! 

[Florestan]